Lessons Learned from 30 Days of Blogging

Last month, I decided to blog every day. As I explained earlier:

For whatever reason, I’ve found writing hard to do the past few years, and this year has been the hardest. I’ve also been disinclined to think out loud, even though I’ve had a lot I’ve wanted to say and share, both personally and professionally.

Mid-way through the experiment, I reported:

What it’s been doing is helping unlock whatever has been inside of me. I’ve been precious about sharing what I’ve been thinking, not wanting to say them unless I can say them well and feeling paralyzed as a result. I’ve also found it overwhelming at times to try to blog. I guess things are crazy in the world right now, and it’s not only affecting my mental health, it’s hard for me to make sense of it all.

Blogging as a practice has reminded me not to be too precious. The less I try to say, the less overwhelming I feel. The more frequently I share, the less I have to worry about saying it all in one piece, which makes it much easier to write. Plus, even though I don’t think I’ve shown it yet, I’m starting to remember what it feels like to write well. I’m rounding into shape again, which always feels good.

The biggest surprise has been that sharing regularly has helped me re-engage with my broader community. I didn’t think anyone really followed this blog anymore, and because I’m rarely on social media anymore, the algorithms seem to have decided I’m not worthy of most people’s feeds. Still, some people are paying attention to what I’m saying, and getting to hear from them has been a treat and is also motivating me to write more.

After having finished the experiment, I’m not sure I have anything different to report, other than to say that I don’t think I had any breakthroughs after 30 days, and I want to keep exercising this muscle. I thought seriously about extending my project through the end of the year, but I opted against it for a few reasons. Even though it wasn’t particularly stressful, it wasn’t stress-free either, and I don’t need the added pressure this month. It also tires out muscles that I’m using for work right now. I can focus on developing these muscles more when work settles down.

In the meantime, I think the exercise still is helping me share more than I was before. This is my third blog post in December. I think a good pace for me is to be blogging about once a week, especially when those posts are more or less organic.

Maybe the most interesting thing for me was seeing what I chose to blog about. This wasn’t just a writing exercise, it was a sharing exercise. I aggregated all of the tags from those 30 days of blog posts and ran them through WordClouds.com to see if I could detect any patterns.

Not surprisingly, I wrote a lot about COVID-19 and the elections. It was nice to see that I wrote quite a bit about collaboration. This wasn’t my goal, but I admit I was curious to see how often I felt compelled to write about “work stuff” — the original purpose of this blog — especially when I had so many other things on my mind. I loved that I wrote about a lot about making — food and art and photography and stories in general.

Finally, I was curious about the people and places I wrote about. Here were people I knew whom I mentioned in various posts (not including my partner and sister, whom I mentioned often and didn’t bother tagging):

I loved seeing this list. My interactions with others play such a huge role in what I think about and how I feel, and I love being able to share this space with the people in my life.

People I mentioned whom I don’t know:

Places I mentioned:

  • Africa
    • Nigeria
  • Alaska
  • California
    • Bay Area
      • Colma
      • Oakland
        • Joaquin Miller Park
        • Mountain View Cemetery
      • San Francisco
        • Fort Point
        • Golden Gate Bridge
    • Los Angeles
      • Forest Lawn
  • Cincinnati
  • Santa Fe
    • Ghost Ranch

How Can We Learn If Decisions Are Disconnected from Impact?

Two years ago, there was a ballot initiative in California, Proposition 10, which would enable city governments to enact rent control on any buildings. I had no idea whether or not this was a good idea, and I was going to go to my default in situations like this, which is to vote no. But I decided to check with my friend, Steph, who works in affordable housing. She was thoughtful, knowledgeable, and even, and after my conversation with her, I decided to vote Yes.

This year, there was a similar ballot initiative, Proposition 21, which would enable city governments to enact rent control on buildings that was first occupied over 15 years ago. Once again, I had no idea whether this was a good idea or not. Once again, I turned to Steph. Once again, I voted Yes.

Here’s what troubled me about finding myself in almost the exact same situation two years later: I had learned absolutely nothing. I didn’t even remember whether or not Proposition 10 had passed. (It didn’t. Neither did Proposition 21.) Even if it had, I would have had no idea what the impact of that measure was.

I believe strongly in collaboration, democracy, and the wisdom of crowds. It’s why I do what I do. And I understand why folks don’t have faith in a population’s ability to govern itself. Our track record, especially recently, is terrible.

Here’s the thing: In order to act in intelligent ways, people need to be responsible for the impact of their decisions. If we don’t know the impact of our decisions, we are not going to make good decisions.

In his book, The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver explains that pundits are terrible at predicting financial markets, but meteorologists are exceptional at predicting the weather. Why? For starters, we are more likely to remember a meteorologist’s track record, because the feedback loop is tighter. Last night, the weatherperson said it would be sunny. Today, it rained. You’re going to remember that.

If we could figure out better ways to tie decisions with impact, I think we would find society generally doing the right things. This is obviously incredibly hard, but I don’t think it’s impossible.